Car Bomb Kills 2 in Jerusalem, Yet Truce Hangs On

A car bomb exploded near a crowded market in central Jerusalem on Thursday, killing two Israelis and injuring several others as Palestinian and Israeli leaders stuck grimly by their commitment to enforce a truce aimed at ending five weeks of violence.

The Muslim extremist group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the bomb, which exploded in a stolen Mazda parked just a block from the Mahane Yehuda market. The afternoon blast came at one of the busiest times of the week: the day before the Sabbath.

The two dead Israelis were passersby. One was Ayelet Hashaher Levy, 24, the daughter of right-wing political leader Yitzhak Levy, a former Cabinet member. Witnesses said she was moving into the area Thursday with her 3-year-old daughter from a Jewish settlement in the West Bank.

Before the blast, movers transporting Levy’s belongings apparently pushed the poorly parked, bomb-laden Mazda toward the side of the narrow street to create enough room for their van to pass. The car also was issued a parking ticket only minutes before it exploded.

Also killed in the blast was Hana Levy, a 33-year-old attorney unrelated to the other victim. He left his office for lunch shortly before the explosion.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, already under fire from his country’s political right for agreeing to the cease-fire, condemned the bombing and vowed “such attacks will not break Israel’s spirit, stamina and will.”

He claimed that the attack stemmed directly from the Palestinian Authority’s decision last month to release militant prisoners, including members of Islamic Jihad, from its jails. However, he conspicuously avoided personalizing the accusation, omitting any reference to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.

That omission was one of several cautious political steps taken during a day of seesaw emotions that began with a conspicuous calm in the fighting and signs of rekindled commitment to peace, but sputtered to a close amid the aftermath of the Jerusalem car bombing and renewed clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces that left three Palestinians dead and an undetermined number of others injured.

Verbal sparring between the staffs of Barak and Arafat over precisely how to announce the cease-fire prevented the planned simultaneous presentation of the agreement by the two leaders.

“We’ve had a rough day,” summed up Gilead Sher, a senior Barak aide and an experienced negotiator with the Palestinians. Sher helped put together the truce reached late Wednesday night in the Gaza Strip between Arafat and former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.

That accord called for Palestinian officials to clamp down on shooting and other violence coming from their side, while the Israelis agreed to withdraw forces from several key flash points and loosen the de facto siege under which most Palestinian towns and cities on the West Bank have lived since soon after the latest uprising began Sept. 28. By midday there was evidence that both sides seemed to be taking the agreement seriously.

In the Palestinian-controlled cities of Jericho, Ramallah and Bethlehem, an uneasy calm settled over areas where violence had reigned just 10 hours earlier. In Gaza, Arafat’s administration issued a statement calling on all Palestinians to pursue their struggle for an independent state using peaceful means at all times.

Leaders Worked to Dampen Emotions

When incidents of violence did occur, leaders from both sides worked quickly to dampen rather than stoke emotions. Barak expressed regret over the death of a 17-year-old Palestinian youth, killed by Israeli fire during a rock-throwing incident near the West Bank village of Hizma. Arafat told reporters in Gaza that the Palestinian Authority strongly opposes acts such as Thursday’s car bombing.

“At this time,” Sher said, “we are witnessing a genuine effort by the Palestinian leadership to really calm the crowds, to calm the streets.”

By evening, however, emotions had again boiled over into violence. Israeli forces reported exchanges of small-arms fire in the Jerusalem suburb of Gilo, two bomb-throwing incidents in the West Bank city of Hebron and shooting at nearly every Israeli outpost around Gush Katif, a Jewish settlement in Gaza.

Israeli officials said the agreement gives Palestinian authorities 48 hours to halt the violence.

Barak and Arafat also came under verbal attack from their political foes for entering into the cease-fire. The militant Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad urged Palestinians to continue the campaign of violence, while Barak’s domestic critics heaped scorn upon his decision to enter a deal with Arafat.

“Instead of crawling to the Palestinians, we should have been seizing the hilltops . . . taking control of the high ground with tanks,” said Rehavam Zeevi, a far-right Knesset member.

If the cease-fire holds, it will be a remarkable backing-down of two leaders who hours earlier appeared to be gearing for a protracted war. One reason for the apparent reversal is that Peres, an Israeli elder statesman whom Arafat genuinely holds in esteem, gave the Palestinian leader something concrete to show his people: the lifting of a punishing siege that was devastating the Palestinian economy, and the pullback of tanks.

Peres, who shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, the late Israeli prime minister, was courtly and respectful toward the Palestinian leader, in contrast to Barak’s more macho style. There is no love lost between Barak and Arafat, aides to both men say.

Barak, meanwhile, takes an enormous risk by refusing to retaliate more forcefully for the Wednesday killings of three soldiers and the Thursday car bombing. But he is eager to cast himself as someone who leaves no stone unturned in pursuit of a peaceful settlement.

Barak’s aides insisted that despite his tough rhetoric in recent days, he has continued to think that a return to negotiations is feasible and has sent out feelers to the Arafat camp.

5-Week Death Toll Surpasses 160

In five weeks of fighting, more than 160 people have been killed, most of them Palestinians.

“I think the situation could have deteriorated into such depths that we all would have lost control and no one could have pulled us out,” Peres said.

Arafat may have decided that the new intifada, or uprising, had served its usefulness and that it was time to shift gears. He has seen international sympathy for the Palestinian cause grow and undoubtedly believes that his own negotiating position is strengthened. And if the truce works, Barak will be able to tell his constituency that he played it right, having balanced restraint and retribution.

In Washington, meanwhile, President Clinton deplored the market bombing, which he said was intended to prevent a resumption of peace talks.

“We were reminded once again in Jerusalem that there are those who seek to destroy the peace through acts of terror,” Clinton said. “This cannot be permitted to prevail. It is now time for those who believe in peace to stand together to stop this violence and to work against the terrorists.”

Because of the recent violence, Israel had been on high alert in anticipation of a terrorist attack. Thursday’s car bombing created panic in surrounding streets for miles. Scores of ambulances and emergency vehicles rushed to the scene. Police on horseback and troops on foot converged on the strip of tiny stores and restaurants. Black smoke billowed from the site, where the car was in flames and shards of glass, pieces of metal and other debris lay scattered.

Police snipers mounted the red-tile roofs of the surrounding stone buildings, while other officers methodically broke the windows of parked cars in a search for additional bombs.

“It was like a vision of hell,” said Menachem Zalman, a 15-year-old student whose apartment overlooks tiny Shimron Street. “I saw blood everywhere.”

Peering down from his terrace, where the force of the blast shattered a plate-glass window, Menachem saw one body on fire, another missing limbs and some clothes.

The mangled wreckage of the Mazda was to one side of the street. Sixteen nearby cars were damaged. A puddle of blood was visible on the pavement. Hana Levy’s body lay in an alleyway until it was hauled away on a red stretcher.

Police Presence May Have Blocked Driver

A special Israeli team of religious Jews spent the next hours wiping up blood and pieces of flesh, a ritual made familiar by the many terrorist bombings that have killed scores of Israelis through the years.

Police and merchants speculated that the bomber had attempted to drive into the nearby Mahane Yehuda market, which on Thursday afternoons is usually packed with shoppers. But the driver may have been blocked by a reinforced police presence and instead parked about 200 yards from the market entrance.

“Somebody wanted to make a big disaster in the city,” Israeli national police commander Yehuda Vilk said, but tall buildings around the narrow street minimized the impact.

Yaakov Hasson, an ambulance driver, was one of the first on the scene. “I saw the girl, about 24 years old,” he said. “I hoped she was still alive and dragged her out of the fire to the side, thinking I could save her. But she was already dead. Her legs had been blown off.”

At least nine people were injured in the blast, including young members of the Orr family, who had moved in with their grandmother on Shimron Street to escape gun battles in their neighborhood in Gilo, an area just south of Jerusalem that has come under nightly attack from a nearby Palestinian village.

“It’s not safe anywhere,” Rinat Orr said later Thursday from her hospital bed, a bandage on her jaw.

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Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.

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Another Attack

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The military wing of the Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for Thursday’s attack near an outdoor Jerusalem market, the site of a dozen bombings and other assaults in the past three decades.